Windsor castle
Had friends visiting from Belfast over the weekend. London on Saturday, despite the pouring rain, and Windsor castle on Sunday.

I'd certainly recommend going to see the castle, it was an amazing place to see. Maybe I'm a bit too anti-monarchist at the core, though I don't generally care, it's mostly an amusing anachronism to me, but the thing that struck me was all the weaponry. Roughly my thoughts seemed to be "we got our power through beating the hell out of you, and next time (if you try to take it away) we won't even have to, we'll just pay others to do it for us". Like I say, it doesn't generally bother me (though I'm not too impressed that the bar on catholics is still in place), but that's still what kept flitting through my mind.

The more positive thing was seeing a room full of paintings of the major leaders in the conferences held after the Napoleonic wars ended. Or I think that was it, I'm vague on the details. Anyway, it was just the realisation that... these were just people. Now it feels like they're just paintings or statues or military strategies. But behind that they were people, with hopes and presumably fears and insecurities. I don't know anything about the time just after Napoleon, but presumably while to some degree they were jockeying for position, they were also trying not to screw the world (or their bit of it) up. Or maybe I'm just optimistic.